Investigating Power
Republican state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists in the American Legislative Exchange Council will consider model legislation this week that creates new barriers to union organizing efforts across the country.
Representatives from the firearms industry and free-market think tanks are criss-crossing the country advocating for legislation that severely curtails—and often outright prohibits—state governments from considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making decisions about investments and contracts.
Buried in the 200-plus page bill known as the ACE Act are provisions that would gut donor disclosure requirements and allow nonprofits to circumvent certain campaign finance regulations, paving the way for an even larger deluge of dark money in politics under the aegis of protecting the political speech of conservative donors and corporations from government overreach.
New research reveals that both House Republicans and the witnesses they’ve called to kick off “ESG month”—a series of GOP-led hearings in July intent on preventing companies from responding to the climate crisis—have deep financial ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Seventeen states have enacted broad anti-disclosure laws since 2018 that will further conceal the influence of dark money in politics based on model language first developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
With very little fanfare, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a host of new legislation in April—including SB 473, a bill that prohibits union dues from being automatically deducted from public school teachers’ salaries.
Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo, the Christian conservative largely responsible for moving the federal court system to the far right in the past decade, is deploying his powerful network to get a friend and former employee elected as Missouri’s next attorney general.
Even before the Justice Department announced the federal indictment of former President Trump last week, the super PAC for Charles Koch’s political operation, Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), had spent $347,022 in May to discredit his presidential bid in 2024.
A decade-long push by Koch’s political and policy network to get more states to flatten or abolish income taxes is finally beginning to pay off, thanks to billions in federal Covid relief funds flowing to the states.
ALEC’s annual economic survey ranks states “rich” based on how closely states track the corporate pay-to-play group’s preferred tax and labor policies as opposed to actual quality of life factors such as wages, poverty rates, and access to healthcare.